Should've been APRIL's BLAHG. Late and still hastily thrown together. Sorry.
Charles ("Charlie" to his friends) H. Gallup with a U not an O, was a photographer for most of his adult life until he died in 1934. More of his work:
https://collections.eastman.org/people/23080/ch-gallup/objects
Gallup is related to galop, a French word that for the most part means gallop. This is a French fact.
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Carbon and cars in the ol' UK.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tech/european-union-wants-ban-carbon-fibre-cars
and this:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/993697566228628
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Olivier, one of our freelance designer, I've said his name before..he and I have been working on a User Guide to the OM-1 derailer, something to go into the box. Here's a random page-spread:
It also has a silhouette of Angele Merkel.
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In June Will and I go to Japan and Taiwan. In Taiwan we'll go to Microshift and probably see more samples of the OM-1 derailer, final finish and all. We may get greedy and talk about a front derailer too. And we'll visit our frame shops. In Japan we'll talk to Nitto about a stems and delivery, and we'll stop by Blue Lug to say hi and maybe we'll see one of their special frames built up into bicycles.
In other kind-of-Japanese news, there's a Bstone reunion nearby on May 4, and then on the 5th (a Monday) there's a hi-carb breakfast platter here at RIV. Only like 7 people will attend. It'll include my old Japanese boss, who's traveling with his family. Pineapple Karen, who owns Engine Room Pizza in Livingston, Montana, is going to be visiting family out here, and she may stop by. She was in a few early '90s Bstone catalogs.
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Photo from last year. Dan's phone. View from a trail on Mt. Diablo, the local mtn.
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INEZ MOULTON is maybe in the top two most skilled sewers of packs and tents who has ever lived. She made many or most of the 330 Rivendell Mountain Works Bombshelters (tents) that were made betwen about 1974 and 1980. There are other good tents out there, but compared to the Bombshelter, they're all easy to sew and sloppy and flappy. Their stability in the wind relies at least halfly-to-almost entirely, on guylines anchored to the snow or ground; as opposed to cutting thru the wind like a knife. And even the best of the non-Bombshelters flap like mad. It's disconcerting, unrelaxing, it keeps you awake with worry. I'm talking about strong winds, not just 40mph, but 80mph+.
Most people won't encounter winds like that. It's hard to stand up in 80 mph. You have to crouch, lean into the wind, and brace yourself. If you have gear outside your tent, it better be anchored, or it'll blow away.
Rivendell Mountain Works was started in about 1970 by Larry Horton. It began in Seattle, but in a few years moved to Victor, Idaho--on the west side of the Teton. The first product was the Jensen Pack, a frameless, paddingless mountaineering and skiing and backpacking pack that was developed by Don Jensen, who graduated from the Las Lomas College in 1961. Las Lomas is less than two miles from us.
Like the Bombshelter, it was a genius design, unlike all other packs of its day, and carried weight better than any other pack. Chouinard (now Patagonia) respectfully copied it in 1973.) The Jensen Pack, like the Bombshelter, weren't for everybody and were never trying to be. To exagerrate only a little to make the point, the Jensen pack was for back country skiers an climbers who would rather take a little care packing the bag and then reap the balance benefits that could save their lives by preventing trips and stumbles...than wear an easy to pack boxy dumpster that would kill them. ALL modern internal frame packs are compromises, heavily influenced by the Jensen pack, or copies or variations of other packs that were. The Jensen pack was and in far simpler a pack, far lighter for its volume, and you can do cartwheels wearing one.
The Bombshelter is its tent-equivalent. It is small, because wind is slower the lower it is. (Ground friction, like a river runs slower near its bank.) Most of the time, in National Park campgrounds and in protect areas, wind rarely gets above 45 mph. Even 20mph feels strong. Most modern tents can withstand those wind speeds, easily, and since even they're rare, tents can be tall a spacious and sloppy.
Rivendell Mountain Works was named for Rivendell, the haven for weary travelers in Tolkien's Middle Earth (in The Lord of the Rings trilogy). I learned of RMW before I'd heard of or read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I'd recently bought a North Face internal frame pack, and the fiberglass internal frame cut thru the fabric. I was climbing a lot in those days, and I was shocked that a highly regarded pack failed to early. I got a Jensen pack after that, and then more RMW gear, and eventually a Bombshelter. One September night at 10,400 feet on Mt. Shasta, there were fourteen tents pitch, and all parties were planning on a full-moon, 5-6 hour climb to the 14,000+ ft summit. The snow stayed hard and climbable at night, and descending in the mornin was easier and safer on the still hard snow...as opposed to mid-morning knee-deep slush.
It doesn't matter. In the mid-to-late 1970s, backpacking and all that was exploding, and just in Berkeley, there were seven of the big national mfrs HQ'd and usuaaly sewing stuff right here: The North Face, Sierra Designs, Trailwise, Class Five, Mountain Traders, Granite Stairway, Marmot. Colorado had Camp 7, Gerry, Lowe, Alpine somethingorother, Forrest, and Holubar. If they made packs or tents, they were all influenced by the hard-coreness of RMW. (The ONLY backpacky maker that wasn't, the genius nudists at Stephenson Warmlite (still in biz, I think), were equally hardcore and off-mainstream in a slightly different direction. All of the would-be mainstream copiers made softcore versions or RMW or Stephenson Warmlite that had more mass appeal. They pulled back some, because hardcore scares people.
I don't know if our bicycles are hardcore in the same way. They're not tricky or hard to deal with, they don't require more money or more intensity to ride, but the thinking behind them was absolutely strongly influenced by the gear ethics and design approach of RMW (and a little Stephenson, too). In the '70s it was a thing to have a Stephenson's catalog, with LONG explanations of their gear and lots of photos of the whole family, naked. Jack Stephenson (naturally) was a former aerospace engineer. The current company has a website and has softened some, but it's still really good, I'm sure. In 1972-4, HEMISTOUR (Alaska to the tip of South America) used a Warmlite tent. That tour led to the 1976 Bikecentennial, which got a lot of people into bikes.
I'd link to RMW too, but they're in transition.
The founder and starter, Larry Horton, declared bankruptcy decades ago and for decades since has had a Chinese Medicine practice:
https://www.futuremedicinenow.com/pages/drhorton.php
He didn't have a great exit, and I get the feeling he doesn't want to revisit those years, but he was hugely influential in my gear tastes and writing.
The Bombshelter tent is probably, at least in my history, the most hardcore modern outdoor equipment item ever made, and here's the obituary of the woman who made a lot of 330 that were made.
https://www.baxterfh.com/obituary/inez-moulton
I found this fascinating, but I want to know more about how she got to be so good at sewing.
It's all too much, isn't it. It's all far out and off-topic and arcane to an extreme and irrelevant to so much, but it's actually part of the deal, or at least part of my personal deal.
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This is a daypack we're working on.
This is what anti-reading technology is doing to National Geographic.
And this is what's happening to TIME.
And this is LIFE. All at the checkout stands in the local grocery store.
In NorCal, a rural town near good fishing, it's worse. I asked for a newspaper, and the lady said, "I haven't seen one for years." This was an impulse buy at their cash register:
Some are more pious than me, some are less, but I'll take Jesus, God, and Lego over an Inconvenient Duke any day.
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My downtime is always tying flies:
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A friend up in the land of no newspapers had this 1950s fire hydrant. They don't make them like this anymore:
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There are lots of people I want to thank, but I don't want this Blahg to sound like a farewell, since it's not. We're doing fine and as I know I've said before, work has never been this good for me. Our group is sickeningly cohesive and cooperative with one another. They're doing most of the day to day stuff, and I'm working on some medium and longer range stuff.
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Get kids started on carbon, plant seeds for the future.
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/us/pre-rcarbon
It's recycled carbon, which is commendable, because I hear it's really hard to do. But now that they know how, why not use "rCarbon" in all of its carbon bikes and carbon eBikes? I mean, if it's good stuff.
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This is interesting.
I contacted the maker, and maybe we're too small for them to deal with, but we'll see.
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